Grieving and Letting go

Serre moi fort (2021) - Amalric I have said many times that Mathieu Amalric is not only a great actor but a great director as well. Over the years, he has proven the fact time and time again with his incredibly diverse work in his filmography: On Tour, a film about a group of burlesque performers touring with a washed-up manager to ‘the end of the world’, Blue Room, a Gustave Courbet inspired sexy noir courtroom drama and Barbara, fiercely inventive biography of a popular French singer. He does it yet again, with Hold Me Tight with the great Vicky Krieps in a very affecting performance. Amalric's strength as a director has always been his seeming aimlessness or controled chaos if you will, which always ends up greatly resonating on an emotional level. Hold Me Tight is no exception.

It starts out with Clarisse (Vicky Krieps) playing polaroid pictures of her family like a deck of cards on her bed, then sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, driving away in a dusty old car that’s been sitting in their garage, leaving behind her loving family - Marc, her hunky husband and two adorable pre-teen children, Lucie, and Paul. She tells herself that after a while they will not miss her. She is never coming back, and they will have to accept the fact. But why is she running away? What is she running from? She is seen saying goodbye to her friend in town (it’s mountainous region of Northwest France near Luxembourg/Germany border) at the gas station.

The film wisely cuts back and forth with Clarisse’s road trip and the happy family life. They are always on her mind and the thoughts of them make her smile while on the lonely road. As the film plays out, it’s as if she is watching her children grow up from a distance, as if by choice. Then the film becomes something else entirely.

Clarisse’s seemingly aimless road trip, listening to an old cassette tape recording of Lucie playing piano, incessant smoking, her pauses, staring at inanimate objects, silent smiles- each of these tell a story, so do her inexplicable, seemingly random behaviors as the film goes on: Why does she hug a stranger from behind in a pub? Why does she bury her head in ice in a fish market? Why does she berate tourists for not keeping an eye on their children? Why is she so insistent of getting the same room with bunk beds at a ski resort over and over again? Amalric builds upon these details to the film’s ultimate big reveal. But unlike the gotcha moments in other films, Hold Me Tight’s conceit doesn’t feel like a conceit. This is mainly because of Krieps, (in my opinion, the best actress working today), who embodies Clarisse with natural grace, inner strength, intelligence, and unassuming beauty all at once.

The fragments of memories of Clarisse's family that she plays in her head and the construction of what the life with them would have been clashes, when she tracks the life of a local piano protégé. Believing that it is her Lucie, now a fiery teenager, playing in an important competition, Clarisse acts out her mostherly concerns at the teenager. And it causes a scene.

Krieps gives a gut-wrenching performance in a film about grieving and letting go that is so portent and heartfelt than any other film I've seen in a long time. Constantly going back and forth with her and her family, feeling the absence of one another yet articulating the connection in a very ingenious way, Amalric, adapting from Claudine Galea's play Je reviens de loin, makes perhaps the most heartfelt film as a writer/director. Give Krieps all the acting awards there are!

Hold Me Tight opens 9/9 in New York, 9/16 in Los Angeles. National rollout will follow.

Jacques Audiard, Lucie Zhang on PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT: Chinese Food, Covid Lockdown and The Internet

Jacques Audiard, known for his superb thrillers (Read My Lips, The Beat that My Heart Skipped), became the supreme purveyor of French outlier cinema, chronicling gritty immigrant experiences in an increasingly diverse nation with such films as The Prophet, Dheepan and even to some extent Rust and Bone, comes out with a slight, sexy romance film based on Adrian Tomine's graphic novels called Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e). With its diverse cast and unusual setting (a lesser known and seldom seen neighborhood, in films anyway), Audiard is upending the typical notion of romantic French film taking place in Paris.

He also introduces us his new ingénue, Lucie Zhang, a 21 year old French actress of Chinese descent, giving a star making performance as Émilie, a disaffected, live-by-the-moment millennial who tries to navigate ever so complicated human relationship in the Internet age. They both were in New York for Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in March and I was able to snag an interview with them. It took place in Midtown Regency Hotel in Manhattan. Audiard, an industry veteran who worked with many great actors over the years, is a fast talking gregarious man, whereas Zhang by comparison, is much more subdued and shy, unlike the uninhibited charactor she portrays. It was an interesting dynamics that I got to witness.

Paris, 13th District opens Friday 4/15 in theaters statewide.

I know that the 3 narrative threads are based on the work of American graphic novel artist Adriane Tomine, I am curious how Paris, 13th District all came about?

Jacques Audiard: I’m afraid my answer might be a little uninteresting. At the time I was looking for a subject for a film. I didn’t have anything specific in mind. And a friend of mine recommended these graphic novels by Adrian Tomine, saying, “if you read them I’m pretty sure you will find something you might like,” and I wasn’t really familiar with him at all. And I read some of his work and I really loved them. So it was a good suggestion. And what I found interesting about Tomine as an author, is that for a graphic novel, it has a lot of psychological analysis - it had characters that are complex and he also left things unexplained in them. At the same time, his drawing style, he doesn’t beautify things- he just shows the reality of what they are like and that appealed to me as well.

Um hmm.

JA: I really didn’t know the popularity of Tomine. So when I started working on the project, people asked me what I was up to and when I tell them that I am doing this project based on Tomine’s work, I was surprised that everyone knew his work. I was the last to know! How does Tomine’s work translate to the Paris setting? Is it because the stories are universal? AJ: I don’t know. I think, the psychology of it, to me it is very individual and even very local. But what I think he does is he creates these portraits of complicated people. (pause) Ask Lucie. She will know. (laughs)

Lucie, What’s your relationship with Les Olypmiades?

Lucie Zhang: My answer is not that interesting either. I have a very good friend living there right now. And my parents met each other for the first time there and fell in love. I don’t live there but I often go there to get bubble teas and food and shop with friends.

What is your relationship with the place?

JA: My relationship is historical. I’ve lived there for a really long time. I moved away after between my first and second film. It’s an area that I know very well. I like it very much. It’s very diverse and always has been. It’s also an area that the last 15-20 years has really undergone a lot of physical change. And the sensation that you get, when you are there, is that you are in Paris without being in Paris, because it doesn’t have the look that we are all familiar with. Particularly, by filming it in black and white, it gave me an opportunity to show an illusion that it could be not even Paris, that it could be an Asian city. It has that kind of look to it. This is true, particularly when you go to Les Olympiades (the 4 high rise residential buildings and shopping malls), that give that kind of feeling. Well, its not like New York high rises in comparison. (laughs) It also feels very young because there are two branches of universities, so there are a lot of young people there. 


I mean, I go to Chinatown here in Manhattan all the time to eat and shop.

JA: Are we far from Chinatown here?

It's just a subway ride away downtown.

LZ: I was looking for it yesterday but took the subway and ended up in Queens Plaza.

Oh no. You took it to the wrong direction.

LZ: Oh really? I wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant because I was craving some good food. I ended up in some place and the food was not so good.

I should've known. I know some good places. How was the casting process?

LZ: Three sessions. First I saw it on the internet. I sent the email and met with Christel Baras (casting director). Second, it was a call back because she liked me, even though I wasn’t the obvious choice because at the time I was 19 and I believe the character was 25 I think. They thought I looked too young and too childish- I am still, I think. So they rejected me. Then the covid lockdown started. And during it I got a phone call again. Then I met with Jacques.

And how did you get to choose Lucie?

LZ: I won’t hear. (Laughs)

My question stirred up a frantic conversation in between Audiard and Zhang in French. I can only make out when Zhang says in English, looking at me laughing - "I lacked confidence," in response to what Audard was saying.

JA: Christel suggested several actresses for the part. So even though the casting process seemed very long for Lucie, it’s quite normal how we did it. What I learned from this process is I shouldn’t always trust my instincts because my first choice for a particular role can turn out to be a completely a wrong person. And for this film, with Amber (Jehnny Beth) and Nora (Noémie Merlant), were also a similar kind of situation. I think for me what worked here was Christel who really pulled the cast together. so you have to be really careful what to say when you are a director.

LZ: How do you know...at what point you know if it's the right person or wrong person for the role?

JA: Well, I worked with you in rehearsals and found out. It's actually very interesting because it concerns the timeline of how long it takes versus when I knew you were the right actor, for you it is the exact moment but for me it was working together for a while that I knew. That it wasn't temporal. Does it make sense?

LZ: I understand.

JA: I think the moment I knew was that Makita (Samba) who played Camille, came in that you guys work together very well. It's when they were talking and listening to each other that I knew.

This conversation was revealing in a lot of ways how Audiard's process with actors works. That it's not necessarily choosing the right actors but it's a bigger process and sculpting the actors during the rehearsal.

Obviously this film was shot during Covid Pandemic. Was it difficult for you?

JA: Of course there were a lot of protective restrictions and constant testing...and in a way it was kind of funny because after you come on to the certain part of the set, you test, you wear the mask, then you come on to the actual set, you take off your mask and take off your clothes... so it's a peculiar situation. But interesting thing during the lockdown is that you basically have a whole population that are forced to be inside, but here the actors were able to come to work and it was a really good time for them because it gave them some place to go outside. The french word here is confinement because they were really confined.

The party scene with the DJ, there were about 100 extras and all of them have been tested, tested and tested again to be able to come. And when they came they were really partying because it was a liberation for them, to the point they didn't want to leave! We had to usher them out because it was the first time they were out of their room in 3 month!

The film is vibrant and has a lot of great energy and has a hopeful ending. The world we live right now is not like that. It's full of disasters and wars. As a generation Z, who went through all these difficult times - The Gulf Wars, the financial collapse, pandemic and another war or invasion happening right now all in your lifetime. Do you feel that your generation is hopeful for the future?

LZ: It's a very hard question. I feel there are two types of people. One is people who are feeling really ill at ease and sometimes they feel they are victimized by all the things that are happening. For these people, they feel there is no hope. The other type is people who are more cognizant of history and what happened in the past that there were worse situations in the past and people managed to survive through them. And they are more optimistic. So it's really hard to say.

Internet. Is it helping or a hindrance for human connection?

JA: We can't make that kind of black and white distinction. It's bad in a sense that its a conveyor of conspiracy theories, fake news, all of that. But at the same time it helps people to connect with culture and broader idea of society, in that aspect it is good. If I can give you a brief analogy in the political world: In France right now they banned RTTV. the purveyor of propaganda. Personally I don't think its a good idea to ban it. We all know it's propaganda, we all know it's fake news, we all know that they are rallying against the liberal agendas and trying to rewrite history with their own fairytale in what is really happening. But at the same time, if we leave it there, we know we can look at them, see how they think and how they are progressing. But if we ban them completely, it robs us of that possibility. And sometimes people do stupid things (like banning) in the spur of the moment but I think it's better for us to leave it. OK. that's my bit of intellectualizing for the day. It's a time for a cigaret break!

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2022 Preview

The 27th edition of celebrating the best of contemporary French cinema offers a star studded 23 film line up. And after going all virtual last year due to the pandemic, this year's Rendez-Vous is back at the beloved Walter Reade Theater, Film at Lincoln Center, NY. The festival runs 3/3 - 3/13.

Opening night film is a highly anticipated Berlinale winner, Claire Denis's Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon drama, Fire. Other notables include Mathieu Amalric's Hold Me Tight with Vicky Krieps as a grieving French housewife, Jacques Audiard's contemporary romance Paris, 13th District, Christophe Honoré's stage adaptation of Proust going awry during Covid-19 in Guermantes, Arnaud Desplechin's adaptation of Philip Roth's Deception, starring Léa Seydoux.

For showtimes and tickets, please visit FLC website.

Here are some notable films I was able to sample:

Deception - Arnaud Desplechin Tackling on Philip Roth's autofiction, Arnaud Desplechin's Deception showcases Léa Seydoux's talent and charisma once again (they collaborated in his last effort Oh, Mercy, where she played a poor working class girl mired in crime).

Here Seydoux plays a sophisticated Londonite whose unhappy marriage drives her into the arms of Philip Roth(Denis Podalydès), a London based American writer, also stuck in loveless marriage. In his London flat, they talk and make love. He jots down his thoughts about her in his trusty notebook for keepsake. They break up many times yet have a strong hold on each other and can't let it go completely. His wife suspects and accuses him of having an affair and he defends himself by saying that Seydoux character is just that, a character, a manifestation of a writer's imagination run amok. As usual for a Desplechin film, Deception is wordy and performance driven. And despite the setting and the characters nationalities, with the usual neurosis and everything, Deception is decidedly and predictably Desplechin and very French.

Hold Me Tight - Mathieu Amalric I've said many times that Mathieu Amalric is not only a great actor but great director as well. Yet again, he proves it with Serre moi fort/Hold Me Tight.

It starts out with Clarisse (Vicky Krieps) sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, driving away in an old car, leaving behind her loving family - Marc, her hunky husband and two adorable children, Lucie and Paul. She tells herself that after a while they will not miss her. She is never coming back and they will have to accept the fact. But why is she running away? What is she running from?

Then the film becomes something else entirely. Krieps gives a gut wrenching performance in a film about grieving and letting go that is so portent and heartfelt than any other film I've seen in a long time. Constantly going back and forth with her and her family, feeling the absence of one another yet articulating the connection in a very ingenious way, Amalric perhaps makes the most heartfelt film as a writer/director.

Guermantes - Christophe Honoré The planned stage play of Guermantes, based on Proust's third volume of In Search of Lost Time (appropriate title for our pandemic times), is getting canceled, because of Covid. Director Christophe Honoré and a large cast of mostly theater actors, who's been rehearsing the play together for months, are devastated by the news. So they have two choices, stop the project, admit the defeat and go home, or continue to rehearse without a guarantee that the show will ever be staged in the future. After much debate, they continue their rehearsal.

So starts this delightful, communal film of actors and a novice theater director rehearsing the Proust's labyrinthine texts while making the Théâtre Marigny and its lovely garden their home- sleeping, eating, singing together and make the best out of the world wide pandemic.

Unlike the play they are enacting which lacks many of the characters back story due to it being a chapter in a 7 volume book, Honoré explores many of the actors backstory and their lives, making the film much more than a mere documented rehearsal. It's obviously scripted cinematically playful and shot beautifully on film, by frequent collaborator Rémy Chevrin. A delightful salvo of a film that shows a power and resiliency of art in the pandemic era.

Paris, 13th District - Jacques Audiard Les Olympiads, the high-rise residential buildings named after the cities that hosted Olympics over the years, is a middle income housing built in the 70s, located in ethnically diverse 13th District in Paris. Audiard, known for his well crafted thrillers and highly emotive characters, tries his hands at a modern romance film with his sleek, staccato style, shot on beautiful black and white.

Webcam, dating apps and decidedly young attractive actors give Paris, 13th District, a fresh, vibrant look at the lives of young, ethnically diverse Parisians of today.

Breakthrough performance here is definitely Lucie Zhang as Emilie, a Taiwanese descent millennial looking for love while living off in her grandma's apartment in Chinatown, located in the 13th District. Zhang's uninhibited performance is contrasted by Noémie Merlant (Portrait of the Lady on Fire) as Nora, a 30 something Bourdeaux transplant running away from the grip of her husband to find herself in the city. Their lives cross paths through handsome Camille, played by Makita Samba, a public school teacher whose self-assured but arrogant demeanor both attracts and repels women. Co-written by Céline Sciamma, Paris, 13th District weaves a seductive, fresh tale of modern romance.